Easter soon.

Yes, yes.  I'm constantly amazed how much music can make you feel, sometimes despite the lyrics.  Sometimes because of.  Mostly despite.

We were assigned to write a poem that started off with our kitchens, and slowly became full of words from another part of our life--a hobby, a study, some part of your life that didn't have to do with kitchens. I was thinking about it earlier. Like, what in my life doesn't have to do with kitchens? No. Like, what do I have in my life that isn't words? No. Like, what do I have in my life. What other words can I put in it? Oh my God, what am I going to do with my life? I just want to run and jump out the window through the screen and fly over the park into the sky where the sun is warmer than down here. Or something like that. I wish I had a novel inside me.

Or at least a few short stories.

Instead, I was only surprised the words came from labs.

-

Summer

Spindly legs of youth flattened on an old green chair, sticking
so that even constant movement yields only discomfort
the outside buzzing in her ears makes her fidget
waiting for the sun is the toughest chore today.

It is sneaking through the holes in the screen door,
warm fingers playing with her hair, which is still light and feather
free of the snarls and gnarls and unruly nests
that will disappoint her adolescence,

but for now the only call is blue sky
and the kitchen unconstrictive, three windows behind
one door within sight, one door in mind
the living room forgotten for the greater room outside

the one where the carpet changes every year
instead of never.  The one where little cities underfoot bustle
faster than linoleum, scattered squares buildings she flies over
when she stands on a chair wobbling

protecting citizens instead of fetching orange juice
the acid tang neutralized by the smell of dirt outside
titrated slowly into the sun until the equivalence point; noon
will bring her screaming back for more.

These are the days we remember when we think of summer,
before it dissolves into the other months, homogenizing memory
a tired solution, with molarity we no longer recall
nor care to calculate, an unknown shoved to the back of the shelf

labled and dated with the last time you added summer's solid
hoping someday it would saturate, possibly precipitate
and salvage, forceps shaking,
a single gleaming sun-soaked day.

note to self:

Lines I've read wrong that would make good poems:

"even where Persephone goes" -> "where every Persephone goes"

Angry writing day:

it has been twenty to seven for days
the second hand still in its death throes
has spasmed normal time for as long
unable to give up its rhythm even in agony.
concious of its emptiness, barely lit
the door produces a constant tapping
as if nearly closed at twenty to seven
like being hollowed by a woodpecker--
if I could produce one good line,
six words strung together as never before
that would bring tears to the eyes of even
the grease and sweatstained beer drowned
sailors who have not only run aground but
have lost the sea
can't say I'd die happily or without regret
but at least I would have proven that somewhere
inside me through all the bluster I had them,
shining softly,
shining somewhere,
I had them.

I don't know how to start a novel, so I don't. I've met people who thrive on the first sentence of a novel, hopping from book to book to find their hearts in 'this', 'it', 'the', or any of the other words that desperately seek you, implant themselves in your mind, and are quoted to your children, your lovers, your friends. The words that slice through your head in clarity, in light. The ones that make you feel you understand the world perfectly in the moment you open your mouth to quote them. I hate them. I hate all good phrases that open novels. I hate perfect lines--if they bring tears to my eyes, they are tears of helpless rage, because none of them are mine. None of them. I love words, but I have never been loved by words. They cavort like whores, flashing their white thighs, licking sensuous lips, letting me catch glimpses of their secret places, laughing and running when I draw near panting for the want of them, my eyes on fire. No... they never come to me. Some find one word, others a phrase. Some writers find chapters, novels of them--whenever I see them, I know they're smirking. They're laughing at me, a writer without words. Hardly a writer, never a poet. You will move no-one. Your soul will never be remembered, indistinguishable from the others--a sailor who has not only run aground but lost the sea. You will claw at the world until your fingernails have cracked and bent, until you wear the tips to the bone and your grasp slips for the blood on the ground, but you will never mark it. In the end, the grass that grows over your body will be the only living thing to benefit from your life--and then only because what lives must die. They don't have to say it. I know. The real kicker is that I probably just have a case of the Mondays.